


Crawly

by evilwriter37



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Burns, Crowley's Fall, Gen, Sulfur, Whump, crowley!whump, some gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-16 04:19:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19310479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilwriter37/pseuds/evilwriter37
Summary: Crowley's "free-style dive" from Heaven wasn't very fun.





	Crawly

He’d never fallen before.

Well, not really. He’d of course lost his balance from time-to-time but he’d always been able to use his wings to right himself. 

Now he couldn’t. They just flapped uselessly as he plummeted through space and sky and everything in between. The wind from it was so harsh that it tore feathers out, streaked his emerald eyes with tears. 

He screamed. He screamed in outrage, in protest, in fear. This wasn’t right. What was wrong with asking questions, with seeing flaws in something that he was told lacked any? He’d just wanted to help, wanted to do his best, wanted to  _ understand. _

But because he’d striven to understand he’d been cast out by those he had thought were friends: Michael and Gabriel and Uriel. Lucifer, more of an acquaintance than a friend, had been cast out long ago. He’d been the greatest archangel of them all, and he’d been the first in Hell. It was bias really. If he hadn’t talked to someone who’d talked to Lucifer, maybe now he wouldn’t be falling.

It became dark and hot. He didn’t need to breathe to survive but the air still felt oppressive and heavy in his lungs. There were flashes of lightning, the air sharp with the smell of ozone.

His falling ended with a splash. He struggled quickly to the surface to release an agonized shriek. It wasn’t water he had landed in, unless water possessed a dark red color, smelled horribly, and burned like nothing he’d ever felt before. Well, he’d never actually been burned before, had never felt pain. But this was beyond simple pain. This was agony. He’d fallen into boiling sulfur.

He splashed and floundered in the liquid, frantic, suffering. All of him was burning, his beautiful red hair falling out in clumps, feathers simmering into nothing, skin hot and bubbling. His eyes roasted and watered, making it difficult for him to see. He had to find a way out of this.

There. A black, rocky shoreline.

Giving cries of pain, he somehow made himself swim in the liquid, leaving his perfect white feathers behind him. He pulled himself up on shaking arms, dragged his way out of the sulfur. He crawled away from it on searing limbs for fear of falling back in. Then he flopped down on his stomach, breaths heaving, trying to take it all in. He couldn’t see anymore. The sulfur had blinded him. Everything hurt and he was just left sobbing, in too much pain to move.

He’d been cast from Heaven, was now certainly in Hell. He wasn’t an angel anymore, but what did that make him? What were the Fallen calling themselves?

He didn’t want to be Fallen, wanted to be back in Heaven where everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. How could God and the others put him through this pain just for asking questions? Was that really deserving of torture? He’d helped to build the universe, the stars, had paid special attention to the vast nebulae and galaxies, and this is what he got in return? Torment? His holiness seared off of him with his flesh? 

He took stock of his form. Burns covered every inch of him. His wings were bald and blackened and shriveled. His hair was gone. His eyes were ruined and he couldn’t see. He was crying and the tears scorched his face. 

What was he now?

Pathetic. That’s what he was. A ruined form crying on a bed of rock. 

How long would he be like this? How long till he healed? He knew nothing of an angel’s healing ability. He’d never even cut his finger before. 

“Come here, Fallen One.”

The voice shocked him out of his misery. He looked around for it despite darkness being the only thing he could see. 

“Come away from the pool. No reason to risk going back into it.”

That had him moving. He certainly didn’t want that happening, didn’t know if this voice was using it as a threat or not. It sounded a lot like one. 

He pushed himself onto all fours, struggled forward at a crawl, each movement jarring him through with fresh anguish, making him shout and groan. The voice sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it through the pain clouding his mind.

The crawl was awful, humiliating. Why didn’t the owner of the voice just come to him? What was the speaker getting out of this?

A gentle hand under his chin made him gasp. It tilted his head up, and his eyes stopped burning and he could see again.

“Lucifer?” he asked, shocked that he was the one to greet him. He didn’t look quite the same as he had in Heaven, though much of his beauty was still there. There were horns curving up out of his dark curls, and when he opened his mouth to speak, he saw fangs. It was as if Hell was prying away at his features and replacing them with something else. His eyes were pure black. 

“I go by a different name now.” The burning was fading the longer he held his face. He felt skin healing, feathers coming back in. Red hair grew to brush his shoulders. “Satan. We must cast out our names when we are sent here.”

“I don’t…” He didn’t really know what to say. He could see a point to that. Why want a name that was connected to another life, a life they could never get back?

Satan smiled devilishly, as if something cruel had just occurred to him.

“I’ll call you Crawly.”


End file.
